The Press Box - How Trump’s Indictment Was Covered. Plus, Rethinking: “Embrace Debate” and a Reporter in a Russian Prison.

Episode Date: April 6, 2023

Bryan and David discuss former president Donald Trump’s arrest, and dive into how reporters are covering the indictment (3:13). Later, they weigh in on the conversation between Stephen A. Smith and Dan Le Batard, on 'The Dan Le Batard Show' where they discuss debate television and their parts within the sphere (22:50). Then, they address news that Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, has been the first American arrested in Russia (43:05). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's official. One Shining Podcast is back, and I am your host, Tate Frazier. And as March Badness begins, we're covering everything from Selection Sunday all the way to the championship and beyond. We're going to have great guests that are coming through on the show. And look, if you're a friend of the program and you're already subscribed, you don't have to do anything. OSP is back. It's going to be right back in your feed. And if you're not a friend of the program, and this is your first time on the rodeo, then let me tell you this. You need to go to Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcast. and smash subscribe today

because the OSP show is back. Yes. You and I went to WrestleMania last weekend. Oh, did we ever? At a fantastic time continuing the tradition of watching wrestling

that began when we were 14 years old. We had somebody a few seats over take a picture of us at the event, and then I tweeted that out and said, please name this tag team. Would you like to hear what our very bright listeners came up with.

Yeah. It's possible names of the David and Brian tag team. Here we go. We got a lot of votes for some form of denim dads or denim lition. Just so everybody's clear. David was the only one wearing denim that night. It's a dark blue shirt for me. Just saying.

No hate, but just saying. Other suggested names, David. The embattlers. back breaking silence. I like this one, the talk and mock connection. We got the Root Warriors, as a W-R-O-T-E,

the News Day. Love it. And now comes the finalists. From the LA Times is Dan Wojke, The Powers of Plano. If you can get 80s, 90s, WF and North Texas suburbs in the same point you've got to do it.

Brandon Barrett came with a succession joke the discussing brothers I think that could apply to a lot of podcasts co-hose but I still love it. Totally. And the winner, David, comes from our listener Tim Hirschbeck

the middle age outlaws. Oh my God. That might be the best one. That makes me sad, but I love it. Coming up on today's show, Donald Trump has finally been indicted on 34 felony charges. How was that event covered? And what face did your favorite cable news anchor make while covering it?

Plus, Stephen A. Smith and Dan Lebitard relitigate the wacky world of sports debate television. And a Wall Street Journal reporter is held in Russian prison. I'll let more in the press box. A part of the ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers. There's Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, producer Erica Servantes, here. David, Donald Trump was finally indicted this week, a little after Donald Trump's own schedule of when he would be indicted. He surrendered in a Manhattan courtroom.

And I was really interested in a couple of facets about how the indictment was covered. Okay. First up, how we saw Trump as he was being indicted. There was no mugshot after much discussion of whether there would be a mug shot. And the judge, whose name is Juan Merchan, said there would be no video in the courtroom. So this would not be like the Murdole murder trial. Still photography was the one way we would see Donald Trump's face in a courtroom. Still photography is back.

So we got a couple of photos. There were a couple of pool photographers. in the courtroom, snapping away before the hearing actually began of Donald Trump and his blue suit and red tie, hair slightly askew, sitting there with his defense attorneys. But that was basically it. I also saw a video of him, a very brief video of him entering the courthouse surrounded by security. And I saw it on TikTok put to Goldberg's theme music, which was just maybe the highlight of my

week. You know, and he always came from the back with the security. anyway moving on they are very very limited and there's not we didn't say have any video from inside the courtroom a real challenge for cable news b-roll wasn't it yeah but i feel like they've got it down to it they've got it down to an art right just a couple of still photos just whatever you know like you like you said b-roll of him entering the courthouse or the crowds amassed outside it it certainly is not enough content to to merit the amount of not a very very video content that matches the level of attention that the scene was getting. But, you know,

that's the news. They had to deal with the slow motion car ride up to the courthouse. And as you say, the backstage video and then later Trump addressing supporters of Mar-a-Lago. Yeah, there was cameras on his plane in Florida before it left the other day. And, I mean, I don't know if there's actually any hope that I guess you always got to a, you got a dream that something nutsy. Not so was going to happen, but it was a lot of attention. It was like they were pre-taping the B-roll at every step along the way, you know, because they knew that they probably weren't going to get anything real meaty.

Did you see the New Yorker for their cover next week went with the courtroom sketch? No, that's amazing. Maybe the most retro way to capture Donald Trump finally getting his day in court. That sounds slightly defensive of Trump. Donald Trump finally being hauled into court. Yeah. Oh, there we go. I'm looking at it right now.

That's fantastic. Yeah, it looks a lot angrier than he did in the still photographs. Sure. Eyebrows kind of pointing toward the ceiling. Courtroom sketches never do anybody any favors, that's for sure. Don't you love, by the way, the New Yorker cover? Just absolutely going out of its way to capture the zeitgeist. Remember when the New Yorker had like wildflower?

hours on the cover once in a while. Oh, yeah. Wasn't like a liberal thirst trap every single week? They would be, they would have just like a, you know, a more fleshed out New Yorker cartoon as the cover. You know, I mean, it's just it's, yeah, it was definitely, well, everybody's got to sell magazines. Come on. It's true. I just got a press release about this one.

I'm like, there's not even an issue yet. It's the middle of the week. you don't have anything to put in this New Yorker yet that doesn't come out till next week yeah well that's the weekly magazine life right the actual hearing Trump spoke nine words two of which as several people noted were not guilty we had to again read about all this in print because it wasn't on television the judge said please refrain from making statements that are likely to incite violence or civil

unrest. In other words, please do not tweet a picture of you like Robert De Niro and the Untouchables holding a baseball bat again. No, that was an accident. The social media team had a little snafu there. I don't know how much cable news coverage you watched, but what struck me was this tension, I guess you could call it,

between the pageantry of a former president being taken into court, and the actual substance of the indictment? Because as you say, we spent all this time collecting the B-roll. The anchor is talking in hushed tones, but never have we had a former president hauled into court like this. Then we got to the indictment, which many of the analysts on cable news seemed to think was

not something perhaps that would stick. Maggie Haberman said there was this general feeling that of all the charges swirling about Donald Trump, this was the most trivial. I think that was the word she used. And it was really interesting to watch TV try to honor both of those things at the same time. Well, there was definitely like a, like we knew that there were 34 counts. We didn't know what they were until he showed up in court, right? I mean, there's no chance we're not going to, that the news media is going to wait until those accounts are unveiled to begin the coverage, you know, and you can't

really modulate in the absence of in the absence of fact right so we're just all kind of going in blind you know there's definitely like a like al capone's vault aspect of this whole thing where it's just like everybody's ramping up and ramping up and ramping up and then all of a sudden it's just like well the sort of like inside the vault was the most sort of tamest version tame might not be the right word but the most like uninteresting version of the of what could have been inside wasn't empty like Al Capone's fault was. I should say that very clearly. But we were all waiting to see what was going to be. And I think that by the nature of not just news media, but ongoing conversation, it started off saying, it started off with like, I wonder if these are all just going to be, you know, just false filing, you know, false financial filing claims. Like we know, like we know that there are some of those in there. I wonder if that's all 34 to by the time that we actually, you know, Trump was walking through the doors, there seemed to be a consensus that there must be something more. What was going to be? be the mystery, you know, what was going to be unveiled as the, as the real lynchpin or the, you know, the, the real tough charge. And then, of course, there wasn't anything else. And then the

interesting thing after that was the immediate, immediate pivot. You kind of, it's a kind of choose your own adventure thing where it's like you can either go with, this isn't going to stick or there's a way that this can stick and the way that it can really matter, right? These are the sort of like, let's take what we have at face value. But then there was this sort of second, second path, which was a third i don't even know if i'm counting that is one or two but this this this separate path of just conjecture right the conjectural path of did they let it did they push it to december is the is the the secondary charge that brag only kind of like vaguely alluded to something that we don't know about yet right is there are there federal charges afoot are there you know is there is there is

does brag have other things that he that he you know up his sleeve but he just didn't have them pinned down yet for this week, but he knows that, you know, given time, he can pull out. So that becomes its own separate sort of fantasy. And, I mean, but you do, you do have to take a step back and sort of wonder if there's anything that is going to have a material impact on Trump's candidacy to be president again. Like, would there have been anything that, would there have been anything short of a murder charge that would have like actively changed his platform i'm not sure that there is which is the ultimate cable news speculation gold mine

but how does this change the 2024 race for president mm-hmm you go beyond the legal issues go beyond how solid the case is it's interesting to me because there are there has been on the left pretty much since 2016 or even 2015 this idea that someday there will be a for Donald Trump. Someday he will finally be made to answer for at least some of what he did as president, or in this case before he became president. And you can see that sort of wish in the coverage of this event.

I was reading Pamela Paul's column in the New York Times. And this whole thing about there's a certain karma to it. You know, Trump has finally been gotten. and you almost glide along or glide over the circumstances in which he was gotten. There's also the sense that when we're trying to remember Trump's scandals, and I think I saw this point in the New Yorker, this was a lot of scandals ago. The hush payment to Stormy Daniels. Yeah. And in fact, before Trump was elected president of the United States.

So it seems no matter what. what you think about the case, it seems like a very, very distant scandal and also a much smaller scandal than, say, trying to steal the election or ramping up rhetoric that inspires people to then storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. Yeah. And again, that's not my case for not prosecuting it. But in terms of how it sits in our mind and sits in the mind of the people talking on television it is it's a very strange thing to articulate it's true i mean but i think that most of the

true crime loving american public is to them this this doesn't seem too galling right i mean how many shows and real life stories have we seen about people who escape charges the charges that you would i mean that you would have expected them to be pinned for and then got busted for everything from you know tax evasion to you know weapons charges if they don't get tagged from murder or whatever. I mean, these are, these are things that it's, it's a story that we've heard told before. Well, when you mentioned Al Capone earlier, I thought you were going Al Capone a tax evasion. You know, I know, but yeah, no, but these are, these are, this is an narrative we know, right? So, I mean, I, I just don't know how much it really changes the landscape.

I'm not sure that it really does anything at all. I think there's actually the most, the most interesting thing to watch is from the PC right earlier about the about the judge warning trump against doing anything inflammatory online which he immediately or his son immediately did and there will be more trump's in an interesting place vis-a-vis the courtroom because he's he's i mean you can't read too much into one still photo but but one would presume you know if he's smart he's relatively cowed in that setting you know he doesn't he certainly doesn't want to risk that like hour you're talking about i mean i'm i'm guessing that he it has been impressed upon him that he should not in fact be tweeting threats against the judge or anybody else if

he wants to um if he wants to if he you know hopes to skate on on these charges or at least get off relatively you know without any jail time but everybody that's you know i think the vast majority of trump supporters are going to expect of him that sort of defiance and and in this case defiance means, you know, trolling the people who are out to get him, you know, just like, just hate tweeting about them. And it's, it will certainly be a temptation for him if he's the man that we think we know. I was very amused reading CNN's Reliable Sources newsletter, their media newsletter where I get lots of links for this podcast. This was Tuesday's newsletter. America, David, has grown weary of the Trump show.

Years and years of breathless coverage has desensitized the public to developments about the former president. The numbers show it. On the night before Donald Trump was arraigned in Manhattan criminal court, ratings on the cable news networks did not break or even near records.

Dot, dot, dot. It's easy to just tune it all out and many evidently are. That was Tuesday. Now, here's Wednesday from the very same CNN newsletter. Cable news coverage of Donald Trump's arrest and arraignment drew big ratings. CNN, 1.8 million viewers in primetime.

MSNBC 2.7, Fox News 4.4 million viewers in primetime. So just to note that the numbness, the disinterest in Donald Trump lasted one day. Yeah. I mean, listen, there's a big difference between, well, I'll just say it makes a big difference when you're covering a story in real time, right? I mean, Trump walking down the street with a camera following him is probably going to do better numbers than, you know, a discussion of Trump's speech from last night, even if the speech was hugely, you know, inflammatory or whatever.

Which is fair enough, but that's probably why we don't judge the public's interest in Donald Trump from the day before the arraignment. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good point. Did you notice your favorite cable news anchors making what I'd like to call indictment face? No. Tell me what indictment face is. Well, we know cable news anchors are always trying to get the correct facial expression.

You don't want to be smiling when you have a grave story and you don't want to be, have a grave look on your face when you're doing a funny story. Well, the arraignment of Donald Trump was certainly a big, important story, but it wasn't the gravest of Trump's stories. So I feel I caught anchors, especially on CNN, trying to kind of split the difference. Yeah. You know, their mouth was almost a horizontal line.

Mm-hmm. But it wasn't downturned. Yeah. They weren't squinting as much. There was a split screen at one point of Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper during a handover. And they had the exact same face. They're being so careful not to do a face, I mean, to not accidentally betray anything

on their face and to not go in either direction. Mm-hmm. that they're just frozen. I mean, you certainly don't want to look happy that Trump's being indicted because that'll get all the media critics, not to mention your own bosses at CNN and angry. You want to honor, you know, the occasion, this is history. We are look at what we are watching. It's a, it's a tough one to navigate, I think. Indictment face.

Keep an eye out for it. And speaking of that, I have fallen in love with another verbal tick of cable news. Go on. Here's NMSNBC talking about the man presiding over the case, Judge Juan Merchant. We are learning more about the other man at the center of Trump's indictment. We are learning more, David. Now here's News Nation on the very same topic. We're learning more about the judge that are overseeing Mr. Trump's arraignment tomorrow

and likely the trial that may follow afterwards. We are once again learning more. Why do I feel like I'm on a car driving over icy roads when I hear the phrase, we are learning more? Is that how cable news says, I just looked up some stuff about this guy? They're learning more. Yeah, and it does it feel incredibly precarious. It reminds me of when we used to live together and we'd watch reality TV and you'd always

comment on how the tick of reality TV was to talk about everything in the present tense. Oh, yeah. David and I walk into a room and you'll never guess what we see. I always thought that must drive you insane. It's like every time you sit in front of a camera, they're just like, okay, say, just be yourself. But speak in the present tense about things that happened three days ago. Like, what are you? Like a novel?

Yeah, like a novelist? You have to just like, have your tenses down straight? I don't know. We are learning more. It's kind of like having the red breaking news graphic on the screen. at this moment some information is coming into my earpiece about this judge whose record, of course, is widely available. Pilford at any time. Coming up on Yield Press Box, Stephen A. Smith and Dan Lebitard debate the past present and I guess future of debate television.

Dan Lebitard's right. But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the Pressbox pod where they are always gratefully received. So big news from the world of pro wrestling

was that the world wrestling entertainment, David agreed to merge with Endeavor. You had some thoughts about that on various Ringer podcasts. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write, we wish the WWE the best in its future,

comma, endeavor. or colon endeavor. Oh, it's too good. Thanks to Aaron Whitelaw for that one. Then there were many, many jokes about Donald Trump's arraignment. There was a tweet saying the NYPD recorded Trump's weight at 270 pounds. Cheech. No more Twitter joke to write, wow, Trump finally got to 270 as an electoral votes.

Lots of tweets, too, about NFL teams now wondering if Trump is a scheme fit for them ahead of the NFL draft. Thanks to Noah Kozlov, Tim Claypack, Johnny C and Jackson Person, among many others for that one. And finally, David, this week's winner comes to us from Nicole Swin, Trialor, and Charlie Ban. Did you see the pictures of the unfortunate couples who happened to have picked the day of Trump's arraignment to get married

at the same Manhattan court? I did not. It was a very overwhelming. Twitter joke to write. It's like a rain on your wedding day. Oh, that's so bad. So bad, but for our purposes, so good. It's great.

If you don't find Trump's arrest ironic in either the correct or incorrect usage of that word, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, in the notebook dump, I would like to talk to you about the matter of Dan Levitart and Stephen A. Smith. The latter was on the former South Beach Sessions Pod the other day, talking about his book, his background, and what we know as debate television on ESPN and elsewhere. Always interesting to me to hear a conversation between two people who are employed in more or less the same field. Yeah.

But go at it in totally. different ways. Stephen A. Smith, star a first take on ESPN. We know what that's like. Dan Labattard, formerly of ESPN, now doing his own thing. I click on a link and he's talking about some issue and he is dressed from head to toe like the Joker or the wrestler Kane doing a different product than Stephen A. Smith is doing on first take. Yes. Well, the conversation, which I recommend you listen to in full, took an interesting turn.

turned into a little bit of a mini reckoning about debate television. Here's Lebitard on what first take has wrought on sports television and American culture. I hate what you two have done to sports television. You can say that all you want to. I would say, who the hell are you to sit up there and say me and him? What about you?

What the hell were you living under a rock teaching at Miami you? You were part of it too? You ain't innocent. I'm talking about all the imitators that you have birthed. all of the imitators that are all over the place thinking without the journalism credentials, that the point of all this is to turn it into an argument on television. That got me thinking.

Would all of this have happened without Stephen A and Skip Bayliss, who's the other person Lebitards referring to there? Or does debate TV seem inevitable, given the way political television, was and is sports radio was and is would we have gotten there in any case do you think well you mentioned skip i mean obviously he predated stephen a smith doing doing that and and and on the same platform um so in some sense if we're talking if we if if you if you're making it about c wane smith yes it would not it was inevitable it was already happening now stephen a smith kind of took it to a level, but that should, in some sense, serve as a compliment to him. I mean, it's funny,

the closest corollary to this conversation is that were the first thing that popped into my mind anyway is John Stewart going on Crossfire all those years ago and just being interesting, like, what you guys do is evil, you know? And there is a, I mean, there's a ring of truth in both cases. You know, on some level, the irony of John Stewart doing that is that he, you know, gets ratings for the show when he goes on and calls them out, right?

I mean, and, and, um, I guess Tucker Carlson went into the wilderness for a while before he reemerged at whatever, with whatever stick he's doing today. Um, but I think that,

you know, in defense of Stephen A. Smith, which is a phrase I find myself uttering at least once a week. In defensive Stephen A. Smith, um, it's not his fault that ESPN and Fox Sports have programmed almost their entire like, you know, half of their daily programming is first take-esque stuff, right? I'm sure Stephen A. Smith would probably be totally content if he was the only person

shouting out wild takes on the air, right? Because that would put a point a lot more, you know, get a lot more oxygen for him. And I think that it's not, I think that yes, it's inevitable, but also it's like Stephen A. Smith is doing the best version of a thing that millions of people want to watch. It's not my cup of tea, you know, but it's, but not my cup of tea. I won't turn it off if it's on, you know, I mean, it's, it's, and I'll say this too. I mean, Dan Levitard is, is, I don't think he was necessarily going after Stephen A. Smith, right? He's like, he doesn't say, I hate you. I hate what you do. He says, I hate what you did to network TV. It's not like, Stephen A. Smith is the program director. What he's saying is, I hate that it would be like, you know,

going after a really influential band because of all the shitty bands that imitated them, you know, that followed them, you know, but if that's what people want to listen to, if you'd rather listen to, you know, shitty Beatles cover bands instead of like other new vibrant music, well, you know, that's what the, I guess the market

speaks, you know, speaks for itself. I've got a few thoughts on this, but let's continue with Stephen A's response to what Levitart said there. Well, I would take on Bridget, what you're saying in this regard, Dan. Those people who don't have a journalism background who don't exercise journalistic ethics and beyond, how are we responsible

for that when our background is based on that? Skip Bayless was a journalist for decades. I was a journalist for decades. We came on television and those ethics are applicable. The fact the matter is, is that when I take a position, it's the same kind of position I would take write in a column. The difference is, instead of writing 800 words and being limited to that space, I get to talk for a few minutes on each subject. When was it, when did it happen that I ignored the fact that I was a journalist for the Winston-Salem Journal, the Greensboro News and the New York Daily News, and then the Philadelphia Inquirer. I find the invocation of journalistic credentials in these debates to be so fascinating.

Yeah. Part of what Stephen A is saying there is, unlike some guy who just created a YouTube channel and started having random takes about basketball, I have covered these things for a long time. I know what the rules are in covering these things. I paid my dues to get to where I am in the business. It also feels like we bring out journalistic credentials. to serve as a heat shield for things that happen on television. Like, you're criticizing me, but did you know I worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer?

And the New York Daily News. Well, okay, but what does that have to do? That may have taught you some things that you use or say you use in your later career, but I just find it funny how those things come out in service of what we're doing or in this case he is doing now. Well, and it's also just a weird invocation because it's not, there's no, there's no real corollary to,

with the institution of journalism. I mean, you could, you could point at something, I'm sure, but like, what did, what did all that real schooling,

how does that, how does that have a real bearing on what you're doing now? I mean, I guess if you're trying to make the case that what you're doing is journalism, which he's not really, I mean, what he's, what Levitar is complaining about is the talking.

which Stephen A. Smith says, well, I get to talk about it a little bit, you know, I don't know. I mean, it's like what, what would Red Smith or Grantlin Rice have done if they had a camera in front of them and they were told just like, you know, go make content for an hour? You know, would they have hewn to some like greater journalistic standard? I mean, I guarantee if you saw either of those guys in the bar after a game or something, they would be much more opinionated and much more unguarded than Stephen A. Smith is on TV. I'm sure they would have broken a lot more journalistic standards. But of course, they're not at a bar. This is television, and it's part of the media and, you know, some rules do apply. I guess I'm just a little bit, like, I think it's a totally legitimate, legitimate argument to say, like, I hate that all these shows are just all, you know, this is all that I get to hear anymore.

I hate that this is the way we talk about sports. And that's fine, too, although you could pretty easily make the case that what that is is the sports radioification of television. I mean, that's just that that's more of a straight line than anything else. But anyway, that's all legitimate. I guess I just don't know if you start from the point of view that these shows are going to exist, what would you have the talking heads, the hosts, the journalists who do this, do that they're not already doing? How would you have them conduct in a different way if they were doing something in the key of first take? Yes, exactly.

That's an interesting question. First of all, I'm definitely down for the red side. Raymond Barry showdown on RKO radio or wherever that would happen. I'm totally into that. Can we just have AI? We should just do AI like videos of great old sports writers of decades past, just coming together and yelling on ESPN in the morning. I'm not sure what I would have them do if they were trying to do if I was trying to

reprogram first take, but keep the trappings at first take alive. I will say when you say, what's the journalistic comp for this? Are we sure the 90s, early 2000s newspaper column, at least in certain hands, wasn't a lot like a first take segment? Because a lot of those columns are very provocative, very personal about athletes. Yeah. I'm calling you out. I am saying something to you here in print in that way. Again, that's not every single one or even maybe most of them from that period. But I don't know. And by the way, in a lot of cases, it's the same people who wrote those columns who are now on the television show.

Sure. You know, they might have had to learn the art of television, but I'm not sure it was such a jump from one medium to the other. It's columns like that to get you noticed by TV producers. Yet, as you hear from here, there was a certain glamour or a certain, I don't know if glamour is the right word. There was a certain like credential in writing that newspaper column that a lot of people that don't feel that doing the TV version of that has. Didn't you know I used to write for the newspaper? Yeah.

That I was a columnist at the newspaper before I did this. That's interesting. So the conversation goes on. Stephen A notes that Mike and the Mad Dog, Jim Rome, people were doing this kind of talking about sports, this kind of arguing about sports, long before he got to ESPN, or at least in his second tenure at ESPN.

And listen to where he takes it from there. We didn't create it. We saw what was there. And we maximize it to the best of our ability. Just like you do. Stop. You'll go into what you don't like or whatever. And I respect that.

You know that. But what I'm trying to say is that you ain't no innocent birdie and all of this. You've attacked many people over the years. Now, you might have had a platform where you're joined with dudes and y'all are not a debate show, so you're not debating somebody, but you've gotten into debates on your own show with people. You've gotten into arguments on your own show with people.

I don't know if that former executive for the Florida Marlins will ever be in business again after the way you excoriated him because you were upset at the assets that he traded away. You have been holding people accountable for decades. And because you don't have somebody to volley back off, you know, volley off back and forth with, oh, you're innocent? You're not.

you're a part of it too. This is Stephen A taking his X-Wing fighter right into the trench on the dust start and finding the vulnerable spot because Dan Labatard and all kinds of people who have never done

Stephen A-style talk shows and would in fact think I'm doing something very, very different on my own radio show, podcast, television show, whatever it is. Nonetheless, did the show. They didn't say, I want to be a print journal

is for the rest of my life and work in this particular medium. They said, no, no, no, I want to have a show where we have takes about things and we are largely building on the work that other people, those print people we left behind do. And by the way, hello from podcast land where David and I are talking about the work of others as we discuss the media. Hello, we're here. We're here too, baby. So this is, but this is what I'm saying.

the soft spot because everybody who was offered it over this period of years who was offered that television show offered that podcast said yes yeah and steved a day say wait a second you might not love what i've inspired on sports television you might not like the direction i maybe you know push this thing in one way or the other we all did it yeah we all we all took the show we all took those great checks, you know, the bigger visibility, the bigger audience that we would have ever dreamed of when we were writing for newspapers. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

That's right where it hurts. It is. It's amazing. I think they probably at the end of the day, it's more, like, you can point at journalistic standards, you can point at, you know, the changing nature of news TV. But there is a sort of like, I feel like there's more of an emotional appeal here that goes unstated, which is people think Stephen A. Smith and Skip and all the guys that just do, that are strictly, TV, you know, Airwave arguers are sort of phony, right? They think whether it's a

really specific accusation of like, you're just taking these points of view to be contrary to get, you know, you're fighting for fighting's sake just because that gets ratings, or something a little bit more amorphous, you know, you're clearly you don't care about these things as much as you're making it out, making it seem like you do. Part of the appeal of it is this sort of performative aspect, right? I mean, I'm sure that everybody thinks that a lot of people who watch first take probably imagine that a beer with Stephen A. Smith would be a lot like watching first take, right?

This is his full personality and, you know, parts of this appearance on this show would be, could be used as evidence of that. But, and I think for somebody who isn't doing that, you know, for Lebitard, in particular, who trades on his real, like his realism, right? Like, I'm a regular guy. I'm a fan just like you. You know, I'm taking this from the fan's perspective. It is damaging that people who, if someone thinks Dan Levitart and Stephen A. Smith are doing

the same job, it's damaging that you see the most famous people being treated as phonies, right? it makes you feel like we're all in this line of phony work. And that's, you know, and that's certainly not true of everybody. But you're right. Dan Levitard is, you know, I love Dan Levitard. I don't know. I really enjoy listening to him and always have always have. Marcher listen to him and talk about a lot of, you know, Miami sports topics in my day that I had no interest in because it was Levitard.

But like, it's, it puts him in a tough spot. You know, I mean, and I understand, I understand both sides of it. But like Dan Levitard and the people like, people like Dan, I won't speak for Dan, are going to say yes to that paycheck that Stephen A. Smith is getting, you know, I'm going to do this job, whatever this job is to the best of my ability. If people are going to pay me that much money for it, I mean, he must be performing some public service, right? I want to push back on one thing you said earlier. And you know how much I respect you, David Schumacher.

You know how much I respect your opinion. Uh-huh. But do we think that the rise of Stephen A really resulted in the reprogramming of ESPN along those lines? I mean, what do you look at on ESPN now and say, boy, there is Stephen A Smith, a Stephen A. Smith-style program. I mean, it's first take in the morning, and then what? On an NFL live, it's not around the horn.

It's not Get Up, though you certainly have your athlete punt in the show. Well, I think there's Stephen A Smithification of Get Up, which is more intense at various times of the year. The Sports Center that preceded it. I mean, I'd say I'll give you that, but I'm old enough to remember Sean Salisbury and John Clayton being thrown on sports. I mean, Stephen A. Smith literally going on get up

on the way in the first take, you know, and just like priming the pump. To the extent that he became the single most unlayoffable employee at ESPN, absolutely grant that. And on NBA countdown two and everywhere else you see him on that at work. I totally grant that. But I think if we had convened the committee, of hand-wringing sports writers a decade ago,

the committee would have come to the conclusion that all of ESPN is going to be Stephen A. Smith and then a Stephen A. Smith clone, followed by two more hours of another Stephen A. Smith clone all the day down. It didn't happen. No. It didn't happen under John Skipper,

who gave shows to people like Lebitard and Pablo and Bumani and stuff like that that were cast very, very, very differently than first take. And it hasn't happened since. It really does. And I think it goes back to the earlier point you made about it turned out not to be easy to replicate what he did or at least replicate what he did and make it popular. But also that just it just didn't it didn't happen in fact. No.

That's one of those things. It became this knee jerk thing to say, well, it's all Stephen A. Smith. It is like I don't look around sports TV and think that. I actually think just the opposite. You know what? You're right. I mean, the bigger thing is, is that, I mean, and maybe it is a decision that Stephen A. Smith is sort of one of one. but you're right he pops up on first i mean on on get up on the way to first take sometimes

they'll do first take and then they will rehash first take clips in other programs you know i mean they'll play that stuff on sports center i mean they'll play the reactions to it it's it's the creation of its own new cycle and that's the real value of it so you're right um it's it's everything is not the same and and and it's it's frankly really hard to to you know once you found the best version of something or at least the most successful version of something it's hard to build everything else around that. But then what is Levitar talking about? I hate what you've done to sports media.

Are we all complaining now more than we used to? I mean, is it? I think we're still locked in this thing we thought was going to happen. I mean, look at podcast them. Look at the most popular podcasts right now. Those look like first take to you, post popular sports podcast. Not to me. One of them is Dan's, by the way.

Rissilo, Bill, PFT. I don't see that. I just don't, I don't see the influence of that at all. I see like arguments, debates, you know, people with big opinions for sure. Well, and pardon my take is like, you know, obviously just an ironic version of what they're doing, which is... It gave us that. Yeah, it's true. But why do we care about Stephen A. Smith and a way, I mean, why are we, why do people object to Stephen A. Smith in the way they didn't object to pardon the interruption, you know?

I think that at the end of the day, it really comes down to the presentation that you look at, you look at the PTI guys and you think, look, look, these. These crotchety old men really believe what they're saying and they really hate each other. You know, it's a, there's a, there's somehow a more ingrained realism to it than what Stephen A. Smith is doing. Who's, it was, like, ostentatiously performing. I think, I think the PTI guys had a little bit of ironic distance from the proceedings at the very beginning. It's true. It's true. I mean, they certainly did. This whole idea of, look at us.

We're giving opinion, like Tony especially, right? Look at us. We're giving opinions about this, you know? Yeah. I have 30 seconds to get a realism or self-awareness. Maybe it is. Maybe it's self-awareness. People do seem to give that sort of, that sort of, you know, meta-presentation a break.

One more thing before we go on a much more serious topic, Russia has detained a Wall Street Journal reporter. His name is Evan Gershkovich. Here's Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC, summing up the case so far. And we have breaking news from Russia where Wall Street Journal reporter, an American citizen, Evan Gerskiewicz, has been a arrested on spying charges by Russia's security service, the Kremlin says he had a secret court appearance and now will be held in detention through at least the end of May. Officials within the Russian intelligence service claiming that Gerskiewicz was, quote, collecting information constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military industrial

complex. You can see how reporting on the Russian military industrial complex could then be in the hands of a certain government turned around and you can pretend. And the reporter was a spy, not a journalist. But, oh, no, no, no, we don't like what you're reporting on. So we charge you. We say that you are a spy. Julia Yoffian Puck writes this. Gershkovich was out in the Russian provinces reporting on Wagner,

the private military company run by the cartoonishly cruel Afghani progogian, excuse me, who has been connected to the deaths and poisonings of several Russian journalists. She continues shortly after the news. of Gershkovich's arrest. Progogsion commented that he didn't know where Gershkovich was, but he would happily search for him in Wagner's torture chambers and some, quote, fresh graves. Also very rare, by the way, this happens.

Porter is not American reporter, has not been arrested in Russia since 1986, according to press reports. You can see the free Evan hashtag from his colleagues and other journalists on Twitter. A lot of people have changed their Twitter avatars to photos of Gershkovich. Wall Street Journal has made his reporting free. And then there's a big Wall Street Journal story out now where some of his colleagues has three bylines on it are writing about the Russian prison where he's being kept. Apparently, what makes it different is that prisoners are not allowed to see each other or even hear each other. wife of a former inmate is quoted as saying

Lefortovo, that's the name of the prison, is the most isolated place to be, and this is the torture. So we are thinking about Evan Gershkevich right now and his colleagues in journalism. For sure. All right, it's time for David Shoemaker, guess is a strain pun headline. Yeah. Last Monday's headline, David, about how Greek mythology is under-exploited in movies was hits and myths.

Today's headline comes from Ivan Maisel. That is sports writer, Ivan Maisel. It's from Texas Monthly. There is a representative from the Texas House, David, from up in Friscoe, speaking of the powers of Plano, who wanted to ban sexually explicit books from school libraries. Yeah. This Republican representative was baited by a Democrat who said, well, you know, that would mean banning lonesome dove from libraries, to which the Republican

representative said, quote, well, they might need a ban lonesome dove. What a brilliant way, by the way, to turn around the whole banning books thing, to just suggest the most popular Texas book of all time as being something that could potentially be banned. Texas Monthly had a headline about the state rep. You can probably guess what title they were punning off of. What was Texas Monthly's strained pun headline? Lonesome Gov. Lonesome, he's not the governor. Lonesome. Is it lonesome dove? Is that what I'm

working with here? Is this going to be like a like a Mick, Mick. And both words got punned on. Oh, okay. We don't like this guy. Lothsome loathsome. Okay, there we go. Loathsome He's just not very good, David. He's just not a very good representative. Dump. Lonesome.

He's like a bomb that didn't explode. Dose some Duddledsome Dudd. I like it when you do puns on both words. No, it's really good. Very good. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes.

Back Monday when we will be learning more, David, about some of the big issues facing the media, plus more lukewarm takes about all of the above. See you then. See you later.